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Saturday, June 22, 2013

ZOMBIE-ISH

MOVIE REVIEW:

WORLD WAR Z

By:

G.P. Manalo

Starring:

Brad Pitt

It seems that for the past decade zombies have been making a huge takeover in pop culture nowadays; from books,
videogames, TV shows and movies, World War Z seems to be a new entry to the
genre as it adapts a really famous novel by Max Brooks into a huge summer
blockbuster.

World War Z is (loosely) based on a book with the same name by Max
Brooks. It’s about a zombie outbreak that has ravaged the earth and humankind
doesn’t have a fighting chance against the undead. The United Nations recruits
an ex-military soldier, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) to help them figure out more
about the zombies for them to fight back.

This movie is definitely nothing like the source material, that does take modern horror literature to the next level. From where I was standing the
movie has a small percentage of it being accurate to the book even though there
were very few hints or small crumbs of things that were in the book, But I try
to act “Professional” about this kind of situation because I don’t want to compare
the book to the movie because there is no point in doing so. That being said, The
movie was definitely not the World War Z adaptation that I wanted but I still
(marginally) enjoyed it for what it is anyways.

Instead of the movie having an (interesting) political narrative
(which I heard was cut off and at the same time the main reason why they
re-shot large portions of the film.), the movie was instead told like a
videogame where one man will go to different places and at the same time he
will encounter a zombie attack without getting hurt at all (until the third act
where he rides a plane), it’s more of a rinse-and-repeat progression. It was
good at first but as it goes on it became boring on a few set pieces, there was
never that tense feeling in an action set piece, you barely root for the main
character going out of the situation because you never felt the stakes were
high or even a hint of suspense on that point because of how “invincible” the
main character is (think John McClaine surviving a truck “accident” and lives
without a scratch in that Generic Bruce Willis action movie).

The story literally felt like an anthology of things that we have
seen in zombie movies from the past, I would’ve liked to see the “political”
aspect of the book for film for it to at least be a fresh take on a zombie film
(even if it will be boring or not) but when we do, instead we got generic
military dialogue. They did do some genuine enough things with the existing elements and it was handled decently enough to progress the film. The even worst part of the narrative is the fact that The
movie lets you assume more than seeing it happen in the movie; It seems that
they are saving up most of the things that they want to explain in this movie
for the existing sequel and they handled that aspect very cheaply in the movie
as it ends on a one-note basis and the ending didn’t really feel fulfilling
that much. But what saved this movie was
the third act of the film, as I watch the third act of the film I would’ve
liked the movie to be more of that. More of those stealthy missions and
showcasing practical zombie, hand in hand combat. There was more suspense in
set pieces like that than what we had in the first half of the movie and Brad
Pitt’s character wasn’t very stoic and invincible as the first and second half
tells him to be, they actually show some vulnerability of the character. It was very interesting to watch him go
through various situations and I was rooting for him from those moments.

When a zombie movie is PG-13 it is a very bad sign, a zombie fan
will be disappointed on the fact that this movie is bloodless, not even a hint of gore. The movie
censors the scenes of zombies eating people in a way on how the Hunger Games
censors kids killing each other. And the way they censor it is the “artistic” camera technique known as Shaky Cam and the zombies would travel as a group
like how a swarm of bees would travel together and pile on one person. Things
like that took me out of the first half besides the fact that some of the
situations that occur were overdone here and there. I do wish that the zombies could've been practical in most scenes, the CGI zombies were rather distracting for the most part.

Brad Pitt is the focal point of this film, for the material he was
given he was pretty good in the movie, not an oscar worthy performance but still great, he was able to carry the film. The first
thing I didn’t like about the movie as I go in to it is the fact that they
brought in a family in this story, and my first impression of this movie was it
being like that bad Roland Emmerich film, 2012. The fact that they gave this
character a family didn’t really work out very well after the first 30-40
minutes of the movie. Without the family in this movie, that movie could’ve
been better without them. Throughout the movie they only exist through phone
calls and even the dialogue between them would be rinse and repeat (“Hey how
are you and the kids?”, “Are you okay?”, “Yeah.”). They should’ve explored more
with Brad Pitt’s character as a “soldier”, the movie should’ve been better off
that way but to say the least they did handle the family aspect decently enough through the first half.

In the end, World War Z was a bad adaptation but not a terrible film
in the process for purists of the novel you will definitely not enjoy this film
if you want the movie to stay true to the source material. It is difficult to
depart myself from comparing this to the source material it was based on, it is
definitely not the World War Z adaptation that I wanted but I still marginally
enjoyed it anyways. This movie could’ve been better in an R-Rating (especially
when it’s a zombie film), the effects of the zombie swarm and the shaky cam did
take me out in the movie. Even if it didn’t follow the story of the source
material the movie did tell an interesting enough story of humankind’s last
stand in the zombie apocalypse. The movie is a rental at its best than a
cinematic experience.